Insomnia
by JjongandMe
Summary: Insomnia had gotten the best of them. But it's not that simple, as much as they wanted it to be. Both Clint and Natasha can't sleep. Nightmares seize their bodies the moment they fall asleep. They will figure out a way to fix it, it just matters what that way is. Warning: Suggestive themes and language.


**Insomnia**

* * *

Insomnia had gotten the best of both of them. But it's not that simple, as much as they wanted it to be.

The first night, Natasha woke up with a jolt, her hands trembling and sweating.

_The ice blue eyes locked onto hers as he took out the single weapon he was carrying. A simple knife, a blade that would break them further than they would know._

_He focused on her face, muttering something incoherent before skimming the knife over her face. She whimpered and squirmed at the pain, but the restraints were preventing her from fighting back._

_Oh, but it was her dream, she could do whatever the hell she wanted, but could she hurt the one she truly loved?_

_She did, there was no choice. But there was a choice, just to let him kill her._

_She lashed out with her foot, and she could feel her foot connect with his appendix._

_A shout of pain, and he crumpled to the ground, dropping his knife. She didn't know what she was doing, everything was a blur, but before she could realize it, there was blood, _his _blood all over her._

And goddammit, she couldn't stop talking, as much as she wanted herself to _shut up already._

"He was going to kill me so I had to kill him, why would I do that, why?" She paused for a harsh gasp of air. "There was that _maniac _telling him what to do, but I killed him anyway, I'm so fucking dumb, why am I so dumb?"

After those sentences, all that came out were sobs and whispers. Oh how she wished that he could come to save her, like all those times.

_But you made that stupid mistake, Natasha. You killed him. He's not coming back._

Natasha lay back down on her pillow, when she realized she was holding her breath. She let go of the breath she had been holding in, and breathed.

Little did she know that this night would be the start of many just like this.

* * *

The second night, Natasha had no option of sleeping. She held her head in her hands, whispering something that even she couldn't hear, crying and silently dying inside.

Eventually when her tears ran out, she decided that sleep was not happening. Natasha reached out to steady herself on the bedside table, slowly getting up.

She glanced around the room, the fear and guilt crushing her. Natasha, however, did not know that she was trapped in her nightmare.

Natasha couldn't parade out of her nightmare, as if it never happened. No, to her, it was something real, something that she had seen, felt.

The worst part of it was that she could remember every single detail of it. She couldn't escape the fear, couldn't escape her mind.

Natasha shook her head briefly, as if trying to get rid of the images that took over just a moment ago. Deciding against going out onto the streets (_at 2:45AM in the morning, like that's completely normal)_ and decided to go grab a cup of coffee in her kitchen.

As she made her way towards her (badly furnished) kitchen, her mind went out of her control, supplying her with terrible images of her nightmares.

There was blood on her hands and blood on the floor. All she could hear was her own maniacal laughter. The sound was horrifying, chilling her to her very bone. "Stop, please stop." Natasha crumbled to the ground, trying to reach for something, anything to comfort her.

She was met with darkness.

The next morning Natasha woke up with a sore neck, most likely due to the fact that she slept on the cold floor of her hallway all night.

It was a Sunday, so she didn't need to worry about going to Shield headquarters for the day. But she wasn't thinking about work. She was too busy trying to get the images of last night out of her mind.

Natasha wasn't progressing very far with that.

She needed air; she needed a break, away from her own thoughts and her own mind. The best way and easiest way was alcohol, she decided.

The closest bar to her house was a stingy and horrible place, with whores and rapists all over the place. Last time she went there, she nearly got molested by a gang of drunken men.

But she didn't want to walk too far, and besides, she needed the alcohol to clear her mind. So without a second thought, Natasha got up from her spot on the floor and started walking to the bar, still in her damp shirt and jeans.

She hated all the attention she was drawing from the people on the streets as she walked toward her destination. As she arrived at the entrance of the stingy old bar, she at last knew the name of it.

A few letters were faded out, but Natasha could still read it. _Bottle of Rum_ was its name apparently. She scoffed as she entered the building.

'_A fitting name for a place in this condition.' _Natasha looked over her surroundings, smirking grimly as she did. She wasn't very surprised when she saw almost nobody there, except for two men conversing roughly, a drunken chick sitting by herself at one of the tables and a bartender looking very irritated.

Natasha walked over to the bar, ordering "whatever will get me as wasted as possible". The bartender softened his glance as he prepared what looked like a mixture of beer, vodka and gin.

Natasha patiently waited, something she almost never did. As the bartender set a "Rum Surprise" in front of her, she prepared to get as drunk and puke out in the alleyway behind the bar.

Before she could chug the entire glass, the drunken chick shouted, "Hey you!" Natasha turned around, surprised. "Come over here, lady with the red hair!"

Natasha found herself walking toward the chick with the Rum Surprise in hand. Something was telling her to go closer and she followed that something.

"What's your name?" Natasha asked, sitting down across from her. As the chick put down her glass of beer, she said, "Pauline."

Pauline looked at her, waiting for Natasha to introduce herself. It took a little while before Natasha caught on.

"My name's Natasha, nice to meet you, Pauline." Natasha nodded politely, even though she realized that formalness wasn't required in a bar like this.

"Why are you here, Natasha?" Pauline's face was flushed red as she said this. It was pretty apparent she was drunk as hell.

The assassin was shocked at this girl's manners. Well, maybe not really shocked. Just a little surprised.

Before Natasha could reply, Pauline said, "Let me guess, to get drunk as fuck in order to forget about something, right?"

Okay, she's a mind reader and a drunken chick.

"No, I'm not crazy. It's the only reason that people come to a bar like this; in order to get drunk and forget about their past."

Natasha took a swig of her drink. "You're creeping me out. Stop it." She gasped, taking in all of the strong flavours of the Rum Surprise at once.

Pauline smirked, looking over Natasha as she did. "What, you've never seen a drunk in a bar before?" She bellowed, knocking back another glass of beer.

The assassin didn't reply. It was honestly pretty amusing seeing this chick making a fool of herself. But wouldn't Natasha have done the same thing?

Pauline was right. It _was _the only reason she came to this place... and it wasn't the solution. Natasha needed medication and rest, not beer and hangovers.

So as the truth slowly dawned over Natasha, the two of them talked some more. Pauline left about ten minutes later, saying she needed rest and a toilet to throw up into.

Natasha looked at the full glass of alcohol in her hands and gave it back to the bartender. Natasha paid ten bucks to him and said, "Keep the change."

The bartender grinned and thanked her. She only whipped around and left the bar, heading back towards her apartment.

'_Time to get some medication from the clinic.' _Natasha thought to herself, once again despising the attention she was drawing from the people on the streets.

Silently she thinks about Clint, about her time with him. He was around, probably only a fifteen minute walk. Maybe... and although Natasha didn't think it was likely, maybe Clint was having nightmares too. Maybe he couldn't sleep either.

Well, it was worth a try. Natasha stopped in her tracks abruptly and started walking towards Clint's apartment.

'_Clint Barton, you better be home.'_

* * *

Clint _was _having nightmares. Actually, no he wasn't. He couldn't sleep, let alone dream.

Clint would call them day-mares, if anyone wondered why he would space out while cooking breakfast and drop a frying pan on his foot.

Nobody wondered about him. He was living by himself, alone.

That word struck him as odd. He had always been alone, but never realized it until last night when he was screaming and kicking at his bed covers.

He had been alone, with no one to comfort him. All at once, Clint hated the rest of his friends.

Tony had Pepper to look after him. Steve had Tony to take care of him. And Bruce was being "fostered" by Tony and Pepper. Natasha had... no one as well.

Maybe the two were more similar than he thought.

But his mind became irrational and he didn't think about Natasha. He was too busy thinking about how poor he was himself.

Loki had taken over his mind, taken over control of his body. There was no way he could live with himself now.

Nightmares seized his body the first night he attempted to sleep. He woke, trembling and wishing for death to take him.

Clint was strong, and he wouldn't let some fucking nightmares break his composure of years and years of training.

That was what he _thought _the first time he slept and woke. He was very, _very_ wrong.

* * *

The next night, he had something similar to a breakdown. Tears wouldn't come and no sound would come out from his mouth either.

Clint was thinking about that day when Loki walked up to him with the scepter in hand. _"You have soul." _The same haunting words came back to him and he was left waiting for the fucking god to appear in his room and kill him.

It never came, but Clint never let his guard down for one second during that night. What did Loki see in him that was so fucking special that he decided to tear apart his life?

Clint was no one special. He was... alone. For the first time in his life, those words _meant _something.

Usually he spat out words like bile. One minute he was holding them in and the other minute he was spitting out insults at the people who hurt him.

So that night, when he was alone in his apartment, Clint said out loud, "Fuck you Loki."

But that didn't solve his problems, didn't help the breath stuck in his chest come out, didn't help him sleep.

Clint smirked to himself. "You're probably watching me with a damn smile on your face. You ruined my life, Loki. But that was the goal of yours, wasn't it? I had soul, so you took it away from me. You took away what was so important to me. Control of what I do."

He couldn't deny the fact that he was talking to himself in his bedroom and that Loki probably _wasn't _watching him.

In this situation, it was perfectly normal for Clint to converse with himself about someone who was now banished to another planet, presumably forever.

'_As long as he stays on that other planet, I won't be free.' _He thought to himself. Slowly, he climbed out of bed, hands still trembling and unsteady.

Clint knew he wouldn't be sleeping tonight, or tomorrow night. Hell, he knew sleep wouldn't come for a long time. Not until he let himself go.

He glanced at the clock next to him. 11:30AM on a Sunday. Maybe it would be better if he didn't go outside today.

No one would visit, because he was used to being _alone_. He would spend another day in his apartment watching terrible drama and humourless comedies on the T.V.

So he was more than surprised when he heard a knock on his door.

* * *

Natasha paced back and forth in front of Clint's apartment door. _'It's 11:45 on a Sunday. He has _got _to be home.' _She thought.

After another five minutes of digging a crater into the gravel stairs in front of Clint's door, she was about to leave.

The door opened and out came a very exhausted looking Clint Barton.

His eyes lit up when he saw who was visiting. "Nat, what are you doing here?"

"Can I come in?" Natasha asked, looking over the archer. He looked horrible, to be honest. It was obvious he hadn't slept in a few days. He hadn't shaved in a few days either. Suddenly she regretted coming to his apartment.

The archer nodded, stepping aside to let Natasha inside.

Natasha looked at him briefly before going inside. "Nice to see you doing..." She couldn't bring herself to say the word.

Clint laughed, glancing at her expectantly. "Well?"

'_He still sounds like Clint, at least.' _"Nothing." She replied.

His whole demeanor changed in a matter of milliseconds. "What the hell, Nat? You come here looking for me and you won't talk! Spit it out or some shit!"

Natasha paused before blurting out, "I'm having nightmares." She honestly expected Clint to laugh and ask what the real reason was.

Natasha Romanoff never had nightmares. She looked her nightmares in the face and shouted, "Fuck you!" But there was something in the way she said it that made Clint believe her.

Clint sighed, letting his breath come out ragged and short. "Me too." He whispered.

Immediately the assassin whipped her head up. "Are they about Loki?" She asked, quick and blunt.

The archer nodded hesitantly. "But after the first two nights I haven't slept."

The two of them didn't speak for a few minutes. "Do you mind if I stay tonight?" Natasha looked surprised that she said that.

They were friends, nothing more. But after the nightmares and the insomnia, maybe they needed someone else's company.

"Sure." Clint nodded, letting a small smile play on his lips.

Before the two knew what they were doing, they were making out on Clint's couch.

* * *

At 8:00PM that night, Natasha and Clint were curled up on the bed, looking at each other. Clint was grinning and Natasha was smirking.

Silently, Clint mused to himself, _'I'm no longer alone.'_

Natasha just smirked, knowing that this was what she needed, not alcohol and a hangover.

Somehow, on that night, they slept without nightmares.

The insomnia had ended, and the two of them found out they needed each other after all.

* * *

A/N: I've been working on this for so long, and it was a pain to write. It got me out of my comfort zone, and I wanted to try something new.

Review if you wish. It helps me improve my writing and makes me feel good on the inside.


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